Over on my Substack, I wrote an essay on the importance of memorization. If you’d like to read it, you can find it here.

And here’s a quote to give a brief preview:

Often, we ask the wrong questions. We look for what a thing can do for us, instead of asking what it does to us.

It feels like June passed by in a minute while none of us were paying attention. I can hardly believe July is upon us and summer is in full swing.

Time has felt strange, like that goop that’s neither liquid nor solid. Some days feel eternal, because of their beauty or because of their difficulties. Some weeks feel like seconds.

It’s been a beautiful and bright few weeks. My great aunt moved into the mother-in-law suite that Jake and I lived in while we waited for our house to be finished. Another family member joins the commune! She’s always been like a grandmother to me, and we are so happy to have her here with us.

We had dear friends visit for a weekend, and it was a delight. I have very few pictures (which shows how much fun we had) but it was a beautiful time. Praise God for good food, good wine, and good conversation.

My garden has been soaking up the recent heat, and I’ve loved watching the whole process of growing things. I recently listened to a podcast by Tsh Oxenreider, and I can’t remember the exact quote, but she said something to the effect of: I garden because of the person it makes me, not merely for the practicality of growing food. And the more I garden, the more I agree with her.

This is another way time has felt strange this month: every morning I walked among my tomatoes and peppers and zucchini as I watered, yet I was always surprised to see bright red jewels among the leaves, or a ridiculously huge zucchini growing on the edge of the garden box.

It reminds me of watching Michael grow: I nourish and cherish him daily, yet still am surprised by how much he’s changed month by month.

My finger has been healing, slowly but surely. It’s been a process — the tip is still numb all around the wound/scar. For a good week, I wasn’t able to do any of my regular hobbies. I coped by reading a lot. However, I figured out a way to knit with my middle finger held out of the way, and was able to finish some projects that way.

We recently returned from a delightful trip in the Sequoia National Forest/Kings Canyon National Park. It was Michael’s first time camping, and he loved it. It was basically his dream vacation: being outside every minute of every day and playing with rocks and sticks and flowers and dirt.

Unfortunately, Jake couldn’t get the time off, so he took care of the homestead while my family, Michael, and I met up with dear friends. We spent four days talking, sitting around campfires, laughing, and enjoying the glorious creation all around us.

I think this national park and national forest is my favorite place in the entire world. I can’t find the words to describe the peace I feel in the chilled mountain air, surrounded by giant trees that have seen centuries pass, with the snow-capped peaks in the distance.

I feel like time moves differently there, too. Outside of the reach of technology and most of civilization, things are slower. Quieter.

For most of the trip, I didn’t have my phone on me and didn’t wear a watch. At first, I found myself starting to reach for my empty pocket, antsy or feeling phantom notifications. Then I finally started to relax. I stopped thinking about my email, or what I might be missing on the Internet. I guessed the passage of time by the sun and my body. I filled my time with knitting or reading or conversation or walks or naps. I woke up to and fell asleep with the sun.

How much has technology changed our perception of time? We’re so used to instant gratification: from being able to look up answers in the moment, to talking to people across the globe in seconds, to cooking on stoves and using flush toilets.

Camping in the mountains really these strips away and forces slowness and forethought. While not all technology is bad (I, for one, am quite grateful for showers) I do think we should be mindful that while it relieves us of inconvenience, it can also relieve us of virtues like patience and prudence.

So if there’s anything I want to hold near and dear to my heart from this month, it’s this appreciation of wild mountain time. I want it to permeate the rest of my life. I want my perception of life to be in rhythm with the natural world. To look for ways to cultivate patience by choosing to do things slowly and intentionally even if a quicker and easier way may exist. To focus less on the fleeting, instant gratification of notifications and more on the slowly ripening tomato on the vine, or the new tooth in my toddler’s grin, or the simple joy of a glass of wine with a friend.

June is our month of rest: we have no travel planned, and are staunchly attempting to have more restful weekends.

That being said, between our church obligations and the homestead, our days end up being quite full. We’re trying to take each day as it comes, and be intentional and thoughtful about our time. That has meant a lot of time handicrafting, and reading, and gardening.

I finished my Nightshift Shawl while traveling last weekend and I’m in love with it. I have wanted to make this pattern for years, and last Christmas my parents gifted me a kit for it. It’s made with special color-shifting yarn (Spincycle Yarns) and the mosaic (or slip stitch) color work technique, which causes the shifting rainbow effect.

For me, it’s a landmark in my knitting progress. I’m so proud of it. I’ve been wearing it on the porch in the mornings while Michael plays and I sip coffee.

I’ve been reading quite a bit during Michael’s naps and while he’s distracted with other things. I’ve never been able to stick with just one book: I often read several at a time and hop between them as my interest directs.

I’m currently halfway through The Unsettling Of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry. It’s quite thought-provoking, and I have several different essay ideas that have sprung from some of his words. I’m sure we’ll see trends from Berry’s work in a lot of my upcoming posts: gardening, Creation, stewardship, technology, the Machine — there will be much to come, I’m sure.

I recently started a Substack (which you can find here, if you’d like to subscribe). I’m planning on using it to publish essays that don’t quite fit the theme of this blog. For this space, I’ll keep discussing faith and family and homesteading, and more. For the Substack, I’ll explore thoughts on things such as Orthodox-specific faith, feminism, education, consumerism, and more.

I’m also reading With All Her Mind, which is a series of essays by Catholic women on the intellectual life. It’s encouraging and beautiful, with essays by mothers and lawyers and nuns and professors. It reminds me that although I’m not in an academic space currently, my mind is not stagnant or going to waste.

For fiction, I’m still listening to Jayber Crow by Berry. It’s a quiet and profound story, and I love listening to the narrator’s soft drawl as I work at my spinning wheel.

My garden has started to produce! Now the great zucchini surplus has begun. I have two plants, and I’m sure I’ll regret planting two before the summer is over. For now, I’m enjoying the fresh produce.

My tomatoes (Early Girl variety) have begun to grow as well. I love checking on them as I water in the mornings. My three plants are a little too close together because I had limited bed space when I planted them, but they’re making the best of it.

My beets, sadly, did not survive for a variety of reasons: dogs, strange stormy weather, nutrient deficient soil, and probably many others. I’m doing more research for next time, and hoping for a hearty crop on my second round.

My parents’ beets, however, did very well. We blanched and froze them for soups in the winter.

Their potatoes also did really well! Michael was very excited to find some mini ones that were “Michael sized”.

There’s something incredibly satisfying about tending to a garden and watching what comes from all the dirt and weeding and watering and care. Every morning when I water, I watch the zucchini blossoms unfurl, and smell the spice of the tomato leaves, and see the bees nuzzle the lavender, and I am reminded that Paradise is indeed a garden.

This tech detox is kicking my butt. I didn’t realize how addicted I was to social media until I deleted it from my phone and realized how restless that made me. I must admit, I’ve fallen away a few times, finding myself scrolling or mindlessly watching things. Each time, however, I’ve pulled myself back on track.

But man. It’s been hard. If you see me liking your Instagram post or watching your stories, feel free to yell at me to get back on track.

Anyway.

I’ve been reading a lot during the in-between times of the day when my son is playing quietly or distracted by something else. It’s my alternative to staring at my phone, and it’s worked well. I’ve been surprised by how quickly a few pages here and there add up. So far, I’ve read eight books of varying lengths and topics. I’m also currently working through two books, one fiction and one non-fiction and both by Wendell Berry: Jayber Crow, and The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture.

I was deeply struck by what Berry said in the very first chapter of Unsettling America, outlining the difference between those with an exploitative mindset and a nurturing mindset.

The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal is health — his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s…the competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurtuerer is in order — a human order, that is, that accommodates itself to both other order and to mystery.

Wendell Berry

Berry describes modern agriculture as dominated by this exploiter’s mindset, using technology to take all it can from the land and pouring in chemicals and fertilizers to make up for the depleted nutrients in the soil. I can’t help but see the similarity between this and our love of expediency and productivity. As a culture, don’t we do the same with our lives and our time? Sleep deprivation is a badge of honor, as is overtime. We constantly are told to look for ways to improve our performance and utilization. We live through to-do lists and measure our days by the tasks completed. We take all we can from every second we are given and pour in coffee or alcohol or pornography or social media to make up for the depletion we feel.

But what else does that remove from our lives without us noticing?

In the same chapter, after he speaks about the difference between the exploiter and the nurturer, Wendell Berry addresses our attitude towards work.

But is work something that we have a right to escape? And can we escape it with impunity? We are probably the first entire people ever to think so. All the ancient wisdom that has come down to us counsels otherwise. It tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom. We have tried to escape the sweat and sorrow promised in Genesis — only to find that, in order to do so, we must forswear love and excellence, health and joy.

Wendell Berry

We are a culture obsessed with work and yet, ironically, we are also a culture that abhors labor. We look for faster, easier, “better” ways to do things, turning our noses up at once-sacred professions that often refuse the shortcuts: farming, parenting, and the list goes on.

As people who’ve grown up in a society full of an exploitative mindset, perseverance is hard. It’s easy to feel like something’s wrong if we run into difficulty (I touched on this idea in my last post). We have grown accustomed to instantaneous results available at the push of a button or exchange of a dollar: clothes, food, entertainment, etc. We’re used to technology removing discomfort and wait times and inconvenience.

We have produced much comfort and convenience, but at what cost? What has been leeched from our lives by technology?

Cultivating a nurturer’s mindset in an exploiter’s society is not easy, and Berry doesn’t mince words when he describes the the cost of our complacency and the difficulties it entails. But humans are made for a nurturing life. We can restore the goodness and virtues that have been sucked from our lives while we were blinded by the charm of the exploiter.

What does this look like?

We must ask the questions of the nurturer, looking to health and wholeness over expediency and profit. Practicing resurrection, as Berry says in his poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front. Learning to labor and to wait, as Wordsworth says in his poem A Psalm Of Life. Serving by only standing and waiting, as John Milton says in Sonnet 19. The list goes on — the importance of nurturing, of patience, of embracing slowness without visible progress — all themes which show up time and time again in poetry. Perhaps because poetry itself fights the exploiter’s mindset.

(I take comfort in the fact that is one thing AI still cannot do, and may never be able to do: write real, good poetry.)

I have been impatient to get our front yard perfectly cultivated, exasperated by how unfinished it looked. But as I read Wendell Berry, I realized how backward that approach is. Now, I’m working on embracing the slow, messy process. Yes, our front yard looks like a weed-infested patch of barren land. That’s what it was until we built our house. Life and beauty and order don’t come at the push of a button. They come with sweat and labor and love. With watering and weeding and shaping.

And slowly, life and beauty and order are taking shape. My garden boxes are alive and verdant with herbs and vegetables. My zucchini and tomatoes are both growing well. My peppers are flowering. My chamomile and roses and marigolds and lavender are all blooming and fragrant.

This approach to gardening should translate over my approach to my life, too. I am nowhere near the person I aspire to be, in holiness or intelligence or skill. It’s easy to get frustrated and beat myself up for where I’m at, telling myself I should be better. Yet that will get me nowhere, just like looking at the weeds and uneven dirt of our yard and getting impatient will accomplish nothing.

Yes, I’m not as patient or disciplined or holy as I’d like to be. But instead of getting impatient and shrugging off the idea of growth and change, or wasting time and money on the latest self-help fad, the only thing that will produce life and beauty and order in my life is the same as what cultivates that in my garden. I should approach myself with the same nurturer’s mindset of wholeness and health.

The only way forward is to put on my gloves and pick up the shovel.

P.S: for those who may be interested, I also started a Substack. It feels a little redundant given this blog, but I enjoy the ad-free, creator-centric nature of Substack and see it as friendlier than WordPress when it comes to owning and distributing my work and my words in the future, with the way social media is changing.

I currently plan to publish the same posts on my Substack as I do my WordPress blog. However, eventually, I’ll probably post some a few extra essays on Substack with my *spicier* takes on Orthodoxy, gardening, technology, parenting, and other varied topics.

Please subscribe if you feel so inclined!